"Five Hundred Steps":
The phone rang late, shattering the thick silence of my apartment like a rock through a window. I had been drifting off on the couch, TV flickering low in the background, a half-finished bag of chips open on my chest. The shrill ringtone jolted me upright. I fumbled for it, squinting at the screen through groggy eyes.
Jake.
We hadn’t talked much since college started. Life had gotten in the way. I thumbed the green icon and pressed it to my ear. “Jake?”
His voice hit me like a slap. “Turn on the news. Now.”
There was no hello, no buildup—just those four words, sharp and ragged, like he’d been running or crying. Maybe both. I sat up straighter, adrenaline starting to flood in. “What’s going on?”
“Channel 4. Hurry.”
I didn’t ask questions. My hands moved on instinct, grabbing the remote, flicking through channels until I landed on the local station. A mugshot was plastered across the screen. Pale skin, wild eyes, greasy gray hair sticking out under a battered cap. The name beneath it burned into my mind:
Gary Michael Hilton.
The anchor’s voice was flat, detached, the kind they use when the story is too awful to feel real. “...suspected in the brutal murders of multiple hikers across the Southeast, including locations in Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida…”
Then came the photos. A battered white van. A shaggy golden retriever sitting in its open back, tongue lolling, tail a lazy blur. And just like that, my stomach twisted into a hard knot. I knew that man. I knew that van. That dog.
I stood slowly, blood draining from my face. “Jake…” I whispered into the phone, but he was already ahead of me.
“It’s him,” Jake said, his voice brittle. “It’s the guy. From the woods.”
Two months ago.
God.
Two months ago.
We had just graduated high school, full of piss and vinegar, both of us 18 and dying to taste freedom. The future loomed like an open road, and we were too naive to see any danger in the horizon. So we packed up my beat-up ‘92 Chevy with the essentials: a couple tents, a cheap cooler stuffed with Natty Lights, some instant noodles, and a handful of joints. No plan, no maps, just a reckless itch to get lost somewhere far from rules, curfews, or expectations.
We drove through the night, the road humming under our tires, Tallahassee vanishing in the rearview as we plunged into the black heart of Apalachicola National Forest. The farther we went, the more the road disintegrated—first into cracked pavement, then rough gravel, then dirt barely worthy of the name. Trees pressed in on either side, thick pine trunks like silent sentinels, branches clawing at the truck like they didn’t want us there.
By the time we found a spot, the sun had dropped behind the trees, bleeding orange through the canopy. We parked at the edge of a clearing just big enough for our tents. Pine needles blanketed the ground, muffling our footsteps and soaking up the sound like the forest itself was holding its breath. No signs, no other campers, just wilderness and the whisper of wind through the trees.
Jake got a fire going with surprising ease, the dry wood catching fast, flames licking up into the darkening sky. We cracked our first beers, the hiss of the cans loud in the stillness. “This is it, man,” Jake said, leaning back on a log we’d dragged over. “No school. No parents. No bullshit.”
I raised my can. “Here’s to being untouchable.”
We toasted, grinning like fools. But even as we laughed and passed the beer back and forth, a strange stillness settled around us. The kind that sinks into your bones if you sit quiet long enough.
The fire popped and cracked, sending sparks into the night. An owl called out in the distance, lonely and low. Our buzz made us brave, or maybe just stupid. After a while, Jake stood and stretched, glancing toward the dark. “Wanna go explore a bit?”
I grabbed the flashlight without hesitation. “Hell yeah.”
We wandered through the underbrush, flashlight beams slicing the darkness. The air had a bite to it, the kind that pricks at your skin and wakes something primal. We found the road again, maybe a hundred yards from our camp. Across it, tucked between tall oaks and undergrowth, was a narrow path I hadn’t noticed before. We crossed over, curiosity dragging us forward.
That’s when we saw the trash.
Dozens of garbage bags, ripped open and spilling out their guts. Cans. Food wrappers. Torn clothes. Even a broken cooler. It was like someone had tried to disappear out here but forgot the part where you clean up after yourself.
“Someone’s been here,” I muttered, nudging a shredded bag with my foot.
“Probably just campers,” Jake said, but his voice was tight, his confidence thinning.
Still, we kept walking. The path curved gently, opening into a clearing that reeked faintly of smoke and something sour. A white van sat under a sagging green tarp, parked half-crooked between trees. Nearby, clotheslines sagged under faded t-shirts and socks. Coolers and plastic bins were strewn around like someone had set up permanent camp. And in the middle of it all, a golden retriever lay on a blanket, lifting its head as we stepped into view.
That’s when we saw him.
He emerged from behind the van like he’d been waiting. Mid-fifties, wiry frame, scraggly beard. He wore a faded camo jacket and jeans that sagged off his hips. His eyes locked on us instantly, and he smiled.
It was too wide. Too fast.
“Hey there,” he called. His voice was friendly, but something underneath it was off. Too smooth. Too rehearsed. “Where you boys from?”
I swallowed, my skin crawling. “Uh… Gainesville,” I said. “Just camping for the weekend.”
He stepped closer, moving with this strange, swaying gait—like he was constantly correcting for balance, or walking on invisible waves. His eyes sparkled with a strange, manic light, and his teeth—there were too many of them, or maybe he just showed them all at once.
“You picked a good spot,” he said, gesturing vaguely into the woods. “Quiet out here. Real quiet.” Then, as if remembering something important, he pointed past his van. “You go about 500 steps that way, you’ll find a real pretty clearing.”
Jake frowned. “Steps? You mean, like, paces?”
“No, steps.” He nodded seriously. “I count ‘em. Keeps things clear in my head.”
Then he started rambling. Fast. Too fast. About trails and parks, ones we recognized. Blood Mountain. Pisgah. Chattahoochee. Places he’d been. Places people had disappeared.
I remember feeling cold despite the Florida night. This man knew things. Too much. He dropped names of towns near ours, trails we’d hiked, and then he’d stop and smile like he was daring us to connect the dots.
“We should get going,” Jake said eventually, his voice low. “Getting dark.”
The man nodded, smile never fading. “Woods can be tricky at night. Y’all stay safe now.”
We turned, and I swear I felt his eyes burrow into the back of my neck until we were out of sight.
Back at camp, we drank more, laughed too loud, tried to scrape the unease from our skin. “That guy was weird, right?” I said, poking the fire with a stick.
“Counting steps,” Jake muttered, shaking his head. “What the hell was that?”
We didn’t bring it up again. The rest of the weekend passed in a blur of beer, burnt hot dogs, and hangovers. By the time we got home, the memory had faded into one of those weird road trip stories you half-think you imagined.
Until the phone call.
Until that mugshot.
Until the golden retriever on the screen.
We called the police that night, stumbling over each other’s words, voices trembling with realization. They patched us through to the FBI. Within a week, we were back in Florida, pointing out the path, the trash, the clearing. I could still smell the smoke from his campsite in my memory. Still hear his voice.
At the trial, we took the stand, eyes down, hands shaking. The prosecutor asked about our encounter. We told them everything—the van, the dog, the steps, the unnerving way he spoke like we were already his.
They found finger bones near his fire pit. Burned. Half-buried. Part of someone.
I still dream about that sometimes.
Sitting here now, years later, I still get chills when I think about it. The forest was supposed to be our escape. Our freedom. Instead, it reminded us that evil doesn’t always come with a knife and a scream. Sometimes it smiles. Sometimes it talks about hiking trails and pats its dog on the head.
Sometimes, it counts the steps between you and a shallow grave.
We were lucky. Stupid, young, unbelievably lucky.
But I’ll never camp that deep in the woods again.
Not ever.
"The Edge of Silence":
I’d been dreaming of this camping trip for months. Just me and my best friend Jake, two city guys with too much noise in our heads and not enough silence in our lives. We’d picked Canyon de Chelly in Arizona—vast red rock cliffs rising into the blue sky like ancient monuments, deep sandstone canyons carved by wind and time. The kind of place where you could breathe again. No cars honking, no screens lighting up, no obligations—just dust, space, and stars.
We packed up the essentials—a battered tent from Jake’s garage, sleeping bags that had seen better days, a cooler full of hot dogs and soda, a few beers, and an old camping stove that barely worked. The drive was long and winding, the roads narrowing as we left the last signs of civilization behind. We laughed about high school, old road trips, and stupid things we used to do—talking like no time had passed. That’s what made the silence out there so powerful. It didn’t feel empty. It felt full of something ancient and watching.
We set up camp in a dusty little clearing near the canyon’s edge. The sun was low, casting long shadows across the jagged rocks. The earth smelled like sage and baked clay, and the wind carried a dry hush that felt sacred. Our tent wasn’t much—thin blue nylon stretched over aluminum poles—but it stood firm. Jake gathered firewood while I fumbled with the stove, eventually giving up and opting for a fire instead. We roasted hot dogs, the flames dancing orange and blue as the sun dipped behind the cliffs, painting them in strokes of deep rose and burnt gold.
“Man,” Jake said, cracking open a beer and leaning back on a log, “this is it. No phones, no traffic, no noise. Just us and the stars.”
I smiled, feeling the weight of the city slowly lifting from my shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, stretching my legs toward the fire. “Can’t beat this.”
The night came fast, and it came quietly. The stars spilled across the sky like glitter thrown onto black velvet. The air cooled, brushing against our skin like silk. We talked for hours about nothing—movies we’d seen, old crushes, how weirdly fast time moved now that we were older. The fire burned low, and the darkness deepened until we could barely see each other’s faces. Eventually, we crawled into the tent, zipped it up, and let the crickets lull us to sleep.
I don’t know what time it was when I woke up, but something had changed. The air inside the tent felt heavy, like the pressure before a storm. My heart was pounding, thudding against my ribs as if it already knew something I didn’t. I stayed still, trying to figure out what had stirred me, when I heard it—a voice. Low, guttural, and close.
“I’m gonna hurt you,” it growled from just outside the tent. “I’m gonna finish you.”
The words didn’t sound angry so much as… hungry. Like whoever it was had been waiting for this moment, savoring it. The voice was thick, slurred, but there was menace in it. The tent shuddered suddenly, as if someone had grabbed one of the poles and yanked it hard.
I couldn’t move at first. My breath caught in my throat like a fishhook. My mind raced, thinking of animals, hallucinations, anything that made more sense than what I was hearing. But no animal talks like that. No hallucination shakes your tent.
“Jake,” I whispered, reaching across the sleeping bags. My fingers found his arm. “Jake, wake up.”
He groaned, half-lost in sleep. “What is it…”
“Shh!” I clamped a hand over his mouth. The voice came again, louder this time. “You hear me? I see you in there!”
Outside, something crunched through the gravel—slow, dragging footsteps that circled the tent like a predator testing the fence of a cage. Then a sudden thump, close enough to make the nylon ripple. Jake was wide awake now, staring at me with wild eyes.
“What’s happening?” he mouthed.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Someone’s out there. Drunk. Or worse.”
I grabbed my phone with trembling hands. No bars. No surprise—we were too deep in the wilderness. The footsteps stopped. For a second, all I could hear was the wind through the canyon and the blood pounding in my ears.
Then—slam! A car door. An engine growled to life, followed by a violent spin of tires against the dirt. Light flooded through the tent walls—white and blinding—then vanished.
“Is he gone?” Jake whispered.
I didn’t answer. We listened, frozen, as the engine noise faded… then stopped. A long silence followed. Then—crunch. Footsteps again. Coming back.
My stomach turned to stone.
“Oh no,” Jake breathed. “What do we do?”
My mind spiraled. We had no weapons. No cover. No way to run without being seen.
The voice returned. Closer now. “You can’t hide. I’m coming.”
The tent shook violently. Jake looked like he was ready to bolt, but where would we even go? I reached for my flashlight, hand slick with sweat.
“I’m going out,” I whispered.
“Are you out of your mind?” Jake hissed.
“We can’t just sit here waiting.”
I clicked on the flashlight and crawled to the zipper, slowly inching it down. Just a crack. I peered through the gap. The moon lit the clearing like pale fire. Our cooler was on its side, contents scattered like garbage. The backpacks had been torn open, our clothes strewn in the dirt.
And there he was—maybe twenty feet away. A figure standing beside a rusty pickup truck, engine idling. He swayed on his feet, holding a bottle that gleamed in the moonlight. Whiskey, by the look of it. He wore a hoodie pulled low, jeans stained and torn. He stumbled and kicked a can, muttering to himself.
“He’s drunk,” I whispered to Jake. “Teenager maybe. Looks alone.”
Jake moved beside me, crouching low. “What do we do?”
I hesitated. Then, “We scare him off.”
Jake took a breath. “All right. On three.”
I flung the zipper down and stood up, flashlight beam steady and bright.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Step away from our stuff!”
The guy flinched, raising a hand. “Whoa, easy!” he slurred. “Just… just hanging out.”
“You threatened us,” Jake said, stepping beside me. “You said you were going to hurt us.”
The guy laughed—a rough, drunken sound with no real joy in it. “Nah, just messing. No big deal.”
He took a step forward, bottle swinging loosely in his hand. “You got any more drinks?”
“You need to leave,” I said, my voice firmer now. “You’re not welcome here.”
He squinted at us, like he was trying to decide if we were serious. Then he scowled. “Fine,” he muttered. “You two aren’t any fun.”
He staggered to his truck, climbed in, and revved the engine. For a second, I thought he might charge us. But then he threw the truck in reverse, spinning a cloud of dust as he tore off down the trail.
Jake and I stood frozen for a long time. The clearing felt emptier than before, but also somehow more dangerous. Like the dark itself had teeth.
Our camp was wrecked. The food was ruined, the cooler cracked. Jake’s wallet was gone, and so was one of my shirts. We cleaned up what we could, shoulders tense, every twig snap in the dark making us jump.
By dawn, we’d hiked the mile to the ranger station. A weary ranger named Tom listened as we told him everything. He didn’t seem surprised.
“Local kid, probably,” he said. “Some of them think it's funny to mess with campers.”
The police arrived not long after. They found the truck abandoned a few miles away, stuck in a ditch. The driver—a nineteen-year-old, three times the legal limit—was passed out inside, still clutching the bottle. My shirt and Jake’s wallet were in the front seat. He was arrested for theft and reckless endangerment.
“You were lucky,” one officer told us. “This guy’s had prior issues. Could’ve gone another way.”
We didn’t stay to watch them tow the truck. We packed what was left of our gear in silence and drove home with the windows down and the radio off. The wind couldn’t blow away the knot in my chest.
That night changed something in me. It wasn’t the threat of violence that haunted me most. It was how fast everything had turned. From peace to danger. From stars to headlights. From laughter to fear.
It wasn’t a monster in the woods. It was just a person. And that, I realized, was what made it worse.
Jake and I still camp sometimes, but never without checking the exits. Never without a knife and a flashlight within reach. We still seek peace—but we know now how fragile it is, and how quickly it can shatter under the weight of someone else’s chaos.
The world is beautiful. But even in the most sacred places, the real danger wears a human face.
We picked a secluded spot way up in the Rockies—miles off the main roads, barely marked on any map. Jake had found it through a guy he knew who swore it was “quiet as the grave” out there. Sounded perfect. The drive up was beautiful—mountain shadows crawling across the highway, the last hints of orange twilight sinking behind the trees. By the time we reached the site, it was just after dusk. The campsite was nestled beside a narrow stream, the water tumbling gently over rocks like a lazy lullaby. Tall pines loomed around us, their scent sharp in the cool mountain air. It felt untouched, sacred almost. No cell reception, no power lines. Just wilderness.
We set up our little two-man tent beneath a rise in the land, just far enough from the stream to stay dry if it rained. The fire pit looked like it hadn’t been used in years. We built it back up, tossed on some dry logs, and cracked open a couple of beers. I remember Jake poking at the flames with a stick, that goofy smile on his face, and saying, “Man, this is gonna be epic. No phones, no bosses, just us and the wild.” I nodded, feeling the weight of everything back home just… lift. We talked nonsense. Jake claimed he could “definitely wrestle a bear if it came down to it.” I called him out and dared him to try if we saw one. We laughed until our faces hurt.
Sometime after midnight, the fire had burned down to a warm bed of coals. We turned in, zipped up the tent, and passed out almost instantly. The cold mountain air curled into our lungs as we drifted off. Everything felt right. Peaceful.
Until I woke up.
It must’ve been around 2 a.m. The cold wasn’t what got me at first—it was that awful, prickling sensation that something wasn’t right. Like waking up mid-dream and realizing someone’s staring at you. I stayed still for a few seconds, eyes adjusting to the darkness, then I heard it. Faint. Distant. A whistle. High-pitched and slow, barely drifting through the trees. It was… off somehow. The tune—if you could call it that—sounded like “When the Saints Go Marching In,” but twisted. Sad. Wrong. Like someone dragging a wet finger across a glass bottle in the exact cadence of a funeral dirge.
I sat up, my breath fogging in the cold. My gut felt like it was filled with ice water. I reached over and nudged Jake. “Hey,” I whispered. “You hear that?”
He groaned, barely conscious. “What?” But then he heard it too. He bolted upright, all sleep gone from his face. The whistle came again. Closer this time. Like it was weaving through the trees, searching.
“That’s weird,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “Who the hell’s whistling out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Maybe another camper?” I said, but even I didn’t believe it. My voice shook. Jake and I looked at each other in the dim light, neither of us wanting to say what we were thinking.
We sat in silence, straining to hear anything else. The whistle stopped. For a moment, all we could hear was the stream and our own breathing. Then… voices.
Low. Rough. Male.
They started chanting. Not yelling, not singing—chanting in this slow, unnatural rhythm that made my skin crawl.
“They think they can disrespect the U.S. Marines… and get away with it. We will make them pay.”
The words were clear, like they were standing just beyond the trees. My heart slammed against my ribs. Jake’s mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. I could see the color draining from his face even in the darkness.
“What the hell is that?” I hissed.
Jake clutched his sleeping bag to his chest like it could protect him. “That ain’t no campfire song,” he whispered. “This… this feels wrong, man.”
The voices kept going, like a mantra.
“They disrespect us. They mock us. But we will not let them hide.”
Footsteps followed. Heavy ones. You could hear the crunch of boots pressing into the forest floor—dry leaves, twigs, snapping under weight. They were circling us. Pacing just outside the ring of trees around the campsite. My mind raced. Were we on private land? Some ex-military survivalist group? A deranged cult?
“We gotta go,” Jake whispered, and I’d never heard fear in his voice like that before. Not even when his apartment caught fire last year. This was different. Primal.
“Yeah. Now.” My hands were shaking so hard I could barely get my boots on. I fumbled with the laces, breath tight in my throat.
“They think they can hide. But we will find them.”
It was right outside the tent now. I could distinguish at least four different voices. One sounded older, commanding. Another had this rasp, like he’d swallowed gravel. The way they spoke—it wasn’t human anymore. It was ritualistic. Deliberate. The tone had no emotion in it. Like they'd rehearsed it. Over and over.
I slowly unzipped the front flap an inch and peeked out.
The fire was nearly dead, throwing long, eerie shadows across the clearing. I saw movement between the trees—several figures. Tall, dressed in dark clothes. I couldn’t make out any faces, but one of them—he stopped. Turned his head. Looked right at our tent. I swear his body didn’t even move, just his head pivoted like an animal locking onto prey.
My blood turned to ice.
“Jake,” I whispered, zipping it back up. “They’re out there. I saw them. We can’t stay here.”
He was already throwing our sleeping bags and gear into his backpack. “Screw the tent. Screw the cooler. Grab what matters.”
We moved fast, grabbing phones, keys, wallets, anything in reach. The voices never stopped. The boots never stopped. They were getting closer, like wolves circling in tighter rings.
We waited for one brief, silent moment—when the footsteps paused—and we bolted.
I ripped open the flap and sprinted toward the truck. The terrain was uneven. I almost went down hard when my foot snagged a tree root. I heard Jake panting behind me, yelling, “GO! GO!” like it would keep us alive.
I fumbled the keys. Dropped them in the dirt. Swore loud. Scrambled.
The chanting got louder, right behind us now.
“They will pay. They will pay.”
I jammed the key into the ignition. The truck roared to life and we peeled out of that clearing so fast, the tires spat gravel in every direction. I didn’t even check to see if they were following. I didn’t need to. I could hear them.
The chanting followed us into the trees, echoing between the pines, warped by the wind.
“They will pay. They will pay. They will—”
And then… nothing.
Silence swallowed the truck as the road stretched on. I didn’t stop driving until we hit a grimy little roadside motel almost an hour later. The guy behind the counter didn’t even blink at the way we looked—sweaty, pale, visibly shaken. Just slid a key across the counter and said, “Rough night?”
“You have no idea,” I muttered. Jake didn’t say a word.
We barely spoke that night. Every creak in the motel made us flinch. I kept expecting to hear that whistle again. Just one soft note, far off. But it never came.
The next morning, when the sun was high and golden and the world felt safe again, we went back. We had to. I don't know why. Maybe to prove it was real. Maybe to convince ourselves it wasn’t.
The campsite looked exactly the same. Tent still up. Cooler untouched. No footprints. No sign of the figures. Another family was there, packing up a few campsites over. I tried to act normal. “Hey,” I asked, “did you guys hear anything weird last night?”
The dad frowned. “Yeah, some creepy singing or something. Went on for hours. Scared the hell outta the kids. We almost packed up in the middle of the night.”
“Same,” I said quietly. My stomach turned over.
We didn’t talk much on the way back. When we finally hit a familiar highway, Jake broke the silence. “Who were they?”
I didn’t answer for a long time. Then I said, “I don’t know. But I’m never going back there.”
That was two years ago. And even now, sometimes when it’s late, and the world goes quiet enough… I swear I hear it. That whistling. Just one note. Off-key. Sad. Searching.
And I still don’t know what they wanted—or why they picked us.
But I do know this.
They weren’t finished. Not yet.